The Weekend

It's Sunday so we gave the staff a day off. I suppose they needed it. They live in PaP and are suffering just the same as the rest of the city. (That's a lie, rich and poor never "suffer" natural disasters alike--plus, studies show that the rich rebuild sooner and the gap widens).

Yesterday, on Saturday afternoon, almost all of them spent time with a disaster trauma counselor who works for our agency. He met with them in groups of five and went through a system by which he helps them work through their experience, etc. They sprang it on me, but I suppose I should have guessed that's what he was here for. Still, I was a bit annoyed. I needed those teams in the field. I protested to our CD and he was sympathetic but said projects would be put on hold. I bit my tongue from saying more--and I'm sure glad I did. Afterwards the atmosphere in the office changed. Their faces were all red from crying and I could see they really benefited from the sessions. There was a togetherness about them. Still, if I'm honest I admit that's my right brain talking. My left brain is still sore over losing a day and a half.

However, the distribution Saturday morning did not go well. Our security was not compromised--I count that as a success. We met with the first community leader early Saturday morning. I assessed his preparedness and felt that he and his committee were somewhat prepared. He had a perfect storage space available too. The distribution point was less than ideal, but if he was a strong leader he would be able to pull it off. I told them that even if we delivered to them today, they should wait and do the distribution when they were ready. I made them agree to tell no one--secrecy was key.

The second leader we met with was exceptional. He and his committee were the best organized I've seen in a long time, going all the way back to El Salvador in 2000. He also had a gated compound that would serve well for corralling people. In my head I instantly started to make plans for distributions at that place. Afterwads my team didn't agree. For reasons I could not extract from them they wanted to begin at the first place. I tried to convince them otherwise but they were firm. What else could I do? This is their show, and technically I'm just an adviser. We arranged to have our transport deliver at 10AM. I smiled and held my breath.

The trucks got lost in the maze of dirt alleys. To my eyes every street looks the same--dirt track, sometimes concrete, bordered by rubble and trash. I got the first pang in my stomach when I overheard that they had been waiting for us at an intersection for over 20 minutes. That means for 20 minutes every curious Haitian in the vicinity had time to put 2 and 2 together. Over a couple of more hills and around a corner and there I saw a crowd of about 300 gathered around the distribution site. I cursed, knowing that our options were starting to drop off.

We arrived at the site and were surrounded. The crowd wasn't upset or agitated--worse, they were happy and excited. I'd rather have stones thrown at me (a solid excuse to abort). People yanked on my arms shouting what sounded like "deeree". I asked what it meant: "they think we have rice!" I pushed through the crowed to find the leader and his team. It took 10 minutes just to clear the place for the truck to back-up. I found them and asked what happened. They shrugged their shoulders. It was stupid, I shouldn't have asked. They weren't ready at all. I was wrong. At least we agreed there would be no distribution. "We finish offloading and shut the doors", they took the words out of my mouth. When they finished they asked where the rice was. No food, I said. When is it coming? When it comes, I said. They weren't happy with those answers, but you know how it goes, "fool me once..."

Mind you, my assesments revealed that food isn't a physical issue, its a psychological one. That is to say, the people aren't going hungry, but they are homeless.

PS - I spent Sunday morning at a UNDP early recovery meeting. It was more to my taste: cash for work rubble removal. It went well. In the afternoon I met with a very nice guy from Spain who taught me how to overlay PaP data into MapInfo (GIS software, similar to GoogleMaps). Then I grovelled at WFP to get food for Monday: No, no, you're scheduled to get it on Tuesday, I think. Oh, AM or PM? Actually, my mistake--its neither, Wednesday at noon.
I stopped asking questions.